Date of birth:
10 October 1930
Bronx, NY
Profession:
Textile Designer
Artist
Student
l948-49
l949-50
l950 Summer Session
l950-51
l951 Summer Session
INTERNAL LINKS
Donald Alter Paintings
EXTERNAL LINKS
www.donaldalter.com
www.donaldalterpaintings.com |
|
Donald Alter heard about Black Mountain College at the High School of
Music and Art in New York where he was a student. A first generation
American, Don had grown up in the Bronx, where his his father Sol Alter, a
Polish immigrant, was a bread baker.
At Black Mountain Alter took a general curriculum with an emphasis in the
arts. He studied Drawing, Painting and Color with Josef Albers and Textile
Design with Anni Albers and Trude Guermonprez. After Albers left, he
studied painting and drawing with Joseph Fiore and design with Warren
“Pete” Jennerjahn. Don also was active in the Light Sound Movement
Workshop taught by Betty and Pete Jennerjahn. On the farm he fed the cows
and drove the “half-ton military truck.”
Don left Black Mountain after the 1951 summer session and was drafted into
the army. He was trained as an artillery forward observer but was later
assigned as a artist to design training aids. When he was released, he
enrolled at Pratt Institute in New York to continue his studies in textile
design. In 1955 he and two other designers opened a studio New Line
Designers. Inc. Don later formed his own textile design business, Design
Logic, Inc. The designs were prepared for use as home furnishing textile
fabrics and wall papers and also for uses as various other products in the
home furnishing industry. The designs were both commissioned and
noncommissioned and promoted and sold in the market. Alter recalled that
the distribution of his design products was international and that he
found the effort very challenging.
After the death of his first wife Claire Rosensweig, Don and his second
wife Alice Himmel reared their three children– one each from previous
marriages and one together.
Since his retirement In 1990, Don has concentrated on his painting.
|
